Adelstien Lied on Bloomberg Interview

Now we know we cannot trust this man. I guess he has a candor issue himself. Today on Bloomberg, commissioner Adelstein stated that he had not heard from Sirius / Xm regarding his proposals and hoped to meet with them next week. Yet what do we have here? A filing from today outlining a meeting that took place yesterday between Adelstein and Mel Karmazin in which Mel stuck to his guns !

On July 17, 2008, Mel Karmazin, Chief Executive Officer of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (“Sirius”), and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein discussed conditions and objections to the merger, possible modifications to the voluntary commitment letter previously filed in the above referenced proceeding, and pending enforcement issues. Mr. Karmazin reiterated positions consistent with Sirius’ filings in this proceeding, and urged prompt approval of the pending merger.

Heres exactly what will happen, they will run commercial free, or very few commercial channels similar to Sirius/XM's music and news channels, nullifying the need to pay for the subscription.

This would of course hurt Sirius, as subscribers could stop paying and still have access to no commercial or low commercials radio, they wouldn't really need to run commercials because... they got everything handed to them for free.

Hell, they could re-broadcast Internet radio stations if they wanted to.

If they want so much spectrum, I think there should be a clause that they can not duplicate content available on Sirius, they should not allowed to be run their own, "Alt Nation" or "Octane" channel clones, or clones of any other channel for that matter.

I think that's probably the real reason they want so many channels, so they can in fact, duplicate content and hurt the Sirius, and it's not like they will have to pay for the spectrum anyway.

I think a more fair approach is "up to" 10% channels (30 channels), rather than giving them a bunch of channels that will immediately become "dead air", force them to develop plans for every channel they want, force them to declare exactly what will run on that channel, and then Sirius gives them the channel if the channel does not duplicate existing content already available with a subscription.

The way it sounds to me, is once they get free spectrum they will abuse the hell out of it in an effort to hurt Sirius.

The "no duplicating" Sirius content should be easy for them, since they claim they want "minority" channels anyway.

I have many diverse friends. They are black, asian, latino and gay... and, it's no surprise that we all have similar tastes as well as dissimilar tastes. So, I don't understand why it's assumed that minorities have ZERO interest in the current satrad programming lineup. Forget about the jazz, hip hop, catholic, outcast, bluegrass, country, rock etc... we need special lineups for each minority group! Well... I'm a white guy - and I like rock music, bluegrass, country, indie talk, howard stern, sports(NFL, NBA, MLB, College Football)... am I so different than other Americans who Aren't white? I mean really... if we had to set aside programming for WHITE listeners... how interesting could it be? Let's say we had a set aside of TEN channels for the white audience. What do you think it would be? How interesting... how many WHITES would listen...really?
Just something to ponder...

I forgot to look at the time of the comment, but did anyone else catch where Adelstien said "This 6 year freeze that I am proposing is actually ON TOP of the 3 years offered by the company."

This guy is on crack.

I am afraid this guy has absolutely no idea how the technology in these two companies works. He seems to think that striping away 25% of the spectrum STILL ADDS 25% to the combined entity. Does he not realize that these two companies will have to continue broadcasting seperately for the next 10-15 YEARS?! Stripping away 25% of the spectrum amounts to 37 channels having to be REMOVED from each network from day one. Which 37 channels will be removed? The diverse ones? Leaving nothing but your country, rock, rap, and oldies? Yeah, lets cut all of the content out of Sirius and XM and turn their paid programming into a clear channel clone.